from columbus ohio

• what the hell is happening in apex, north carolina and why aren't the people on the tv new wearing gas masks?
• speaking of tv news + radio news + print media too...why are people calling this mark foley episode a sex scandal. it's an abuse of power. for me it's not about "sex" even the naughty email as tony snow calls it...it's about why powerful men think that they do whatever ever they want.
• and on powerful men, who does jack straw think he is asking veiled women to remove their veils so that he can see their faces? i hear what he is saying and claiming, but why does he need to be more comfortable seeing their facial expressions? isn't he the public servant?
  
• thanks to liza and eddie's gift of entertainment weekly i got to read stephen king's invective against nancy grace. dang. i know miss bird must be taking gas because NG is her sorority sister. bird will so be giving her the secret hand gesture if/even as she goes down.
• and go on kenny rogers with your bad 41 years 330 days old self. thanks so much for your hard work tonight against the yankees. go detroit. go tigers.
• on the baseball tip, it was pretty exciting to hear my brother go on about his field of dream excursion to camden yards to play baseball on thursday. sounds like he had an excellent good time. it was pretty amazing for him.
  
• after pmq + i spoke, rpq and i chatted. i explained to him that i was headed to yoga; he was headed to bed. he couldn't quite get it that i would be headed to yoga at dark. so we had a quick conversation about the westward path of the setting sun and how i live so much further west so i had more sunshine even though it was the same exact time. he paused and asked, la, is it fall there? love it. i love the way his mind works. raq was crying about something in the background so we didn't talk at all. i bid her hello through the speakerphone.
  

so, my colleague michelle and i came to ohio for the weekend for julie's annual imagining america conference. looking forward to the meeting. our drive was pretty beautiful ...pretty yellow foliage and an enormous gorgeous moon. because michelle left her two boys at home with her husband, she asked whether we could stop at mcdonalds for dinner. i didn't quite know how cheap mcdonalds is. tom and miri, thanks for keeping the pricepoint at your namesake so reasonable.

here's the text of an email i fired off today before i left ann arbor with an update on my job search...

St. Louis University requires an on-line application. I couldn't for the life of me get it to work today. I emailed tech support people; I emailed the deparmental secretary. The SLU tech people couldn't trouble-shoot it and the secretary's email bounced back twice.

Desperate to figure out how to post this before their offices closed for the weekend, I called to speak with the secretary. A student worker answered said the only person in the office was the chairperson and put me right through to him. (I seriously considered hanging up but I had already said my name. I was so sweating). He apologized profusely about the problems that others have had too. He asked me who I was and where I was calling from. When he heard that I will have a Ph.D. in AMST from Maryland, and that I was in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps (this is a Jesuit college), he asked if I could meet them at 1 on Friday the 13th.

I have my second interview at ASA. I am so pinching myself. My mother will pinch herself and the Blessed Virgin Mary.